


Rise and Fall (What Lies Ahead)

by Draco_sollicitus



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, star wars episode IX
Genre: Adventure, Canon Universe, Damerey Endgame, Episode IX, F/M, Force Ghosts, References to the EU, Rey is the Hero, Romance, Slow Burn, Speculation, The Rise of Skywalker - Freeform, The Skywalker Saga, lots of nostalgia, mild violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-01-12 09:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18444173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: As the Resistance rebuilds and returns in full force to its battle against the First Order, Rey of Jakku continues on her own journey to find the belonging that was promised to her.With mysteries of her past yet to unfold, Rey will be tested by the Force and foes alike while she rises to new heights as the last of the Jedi Order. Bearing the burden and wisdom of the thousands who came before her, Rey moves forward into a new era of the galaxy, one defined by balance -- along the way, she will be faced with the decision of who to trust, who to love, and who to give everything to.





	1. The Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> So, I got so many feelings from the Star Wars Episode IX trailer, so here's a new multi-chapter endgame Damerey fic that's entirely different from my very first Damerey/multi-chapter Episode IX speculation fic (Bound to the Light)
> 
>  
> 
> ...I hope you enjoy?

The distant call of woolamanders cuts through the humid air; inside a small hut constructed of mud, Rey ignores the bead of sweat that falls from her hair towards her chin and closes her eyes.

In her hands are the once-jagged pieces of Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, and as she slips the restored Kyber Crystal in place, a distant hum resonates from somewhere inside her chest. She holds her hands aloft and envisions the pieces fitting together, two halves of a whole returning to each other, not as though they had never been separate, but rather accepting the break that had once divided them.

With a small smile of triumph, Rey feels the hilt click together once more. She stands before she even opens her eyes and holds the saber in front of her, testing the weight; after she opens her eyes, she gasps and startles backwards.

She’s no longer in the hut.

Instead, she’s back on Jakku, the miles of sand stretching away from her, desolate and bare, and when she stumbles, she falls into a familiar leather jacket.

“Finn?” Rey cries, prodding her friend in the back. They’re on the Millennium Falcon, and BB-8 trills something anxiously up at her. Finn doesn’t respond. “Finn, talk to me!”

“I’m a big deal in the Resistance,” he says instead, addressing someone in front of him; Rey peers around him to see who that is, a voice whispering to her that she _has_ to see who Finn’s talking to, but when she does, she’s suddenly in a forest.

“No.”

She shakes her head and starts to sprint, the path horribly familiar, but no matter how hard she runs, her fear only increases, and when she trips over a log, lightsaber still in hand, she falls right into That Chair, the one where her mind had been nearly split in half, where she’d felt fear like she never had before, where she’d met --

Kylo Ren.

“Don’t do this Ben,” she begs, but he only tilts his head and holds his hand out.

“ _Ben isn’t here_.”

Rey screams, and falls through the chair, right onto her ass on Ahch-To, the nuns chittering at her in disapproval. She leaps to her feet and sprints up the steps, understanding now, her heart pounding in anticipation because he’s here, he’s going to be at the top of the steps, and his lightsaber is fixed now, he can come home, he can come back, she can bring him back this time because she _knows_ he’s a hero, he died for all of them, he can live for them too this time but --

When she reaches the precipice, there’s nothing. A black hole, an abyss, meets her gaze, and with a push that comes from nowhere, she’s flying, or rather falling, through space.

As she falls, a strangely familiar voice speaks to her, one that sounds like a home she’s never had.

“ _Those were your first steps, Rey, but your true journey and the answers you seek lie ahead._ ”

Rey falls on her face in the open doorway of the mud hut on Yavin 4, and briefly the Woolamanders pause in their hooting. When she coughs and spits out a spot of blood from biting her tongue, the hooting resumes, as does the call of birds overheard and the hum of insects.

She rolls over on her back, wincing, and scowls up at the sky.

“What the hell was that?”

As usual, the Force chooses not to answer, and Rey fights to find the acceptance of its unfortunate silence before struggling to her feet.

Absentmindedly rubbing her sore chin, she stalks down the jungle path, sweat trickling in the small of her back. Humidity is still something new to her, the way it frizzles her hair and leaves it sticking to her neck, the way it clings and grasps at her limbs as she walks through shockingly heavy air, the weight of it in her lungs when she breathes during meditation. The only person here who’s suffering more than she is would be Finn, who swears up and down that he wasn’t made for any kind of heat.

Thinking of Finn brings a bittersweet smile to her face. She doesn’t think she’ll ever quite forget the odd punch to her gut when she looked over on the Falcon as they escaped from Crait and saw him hovering at the small mechanic’s side. Rose is kind, and sweet, and strangely delicate - things that Rey isn’t, and will never be. She wishes --

_Jedi don’t wish._

Rey pushes the thought away and continues to weave through the tricky undergrowth, the path laid by Kes Dameron a little less clear, a little less easy to follow after years of no maintenance. With his son off fighting wars and no one to help him on the farm, the elder Dameron had turned his attention to his koyos, and left the further reaches of his land to the wilderness. Rey likes that it’s a little unkempt, a little untamed.

It’s good to know that she isn’t alone in that. The wildness.

A tug at her gut has her looking to the left, through a patch of sunlight. There, head tilted up towards the massive star above them, is the one person who Rey wants to share her success with. Well, the only person alive.

“Leia.”

The older woman looks over with a soft expression that few would be able to recognize behind all the flint; the last year hasn’t been easy on her, but the daughter of Anakin Skywalker is strong, sturdier than an redwood of Endor with roots twice as deep, and she stands unbroken, unbent by the difficulties they’ve encountered since Crait. In the last year, Leia and Rey have grown together, bound by their silent grief for Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Ben Solo, and strengthened by their resolve to rid the galaxy of the First Order and the evil of Kylo Ren.

Rey doesn’t think there’s a person better suited for the job of navigating _that_ contradiction.

Leia doesn’t say a word to her as she approaches, but when Rey holds out the lightsaber, she accepts it with a genuine smile on her face.

“May I?’ A silly question; they both know Leia has more of a right to it than Rey does, but it’s nice to be asked all the same.

“Please.” Rey sits on a thick root that bends from the earth and forms a space large enough for her to sit.

There’s a quiet moment where Leia does nothing at all. Rey focuses on the moment and feels a faint current of something that isn’t quite power, but rather, something much more important that power, flowing around them and surrounding Leia. With very little pomp and circumstance, the general holds the weapon out and activates it.

The blue beam that emanates from the hilt is less bright than it used to be, closer to a white glow that Rey finds oddly soothing the moment she looks at it. Leia brings it up, pointing towards Yavin, before cutting backwards; singed grass falls around her, and she begins a hypnotic movement through the clearing, her eyes closed and expression peaceful.

Rey doesn’t watch after the first few seconds. It feels too personal.

She hears and feels the lightsaber being deactivated, and when she looks up, Leia’s staring at the hilt in her hand.

“It’s yours,” Rey says quietly. “I can build my own. I understand how, and the texts told me about a planet where the crystals can be found. That lightsaber has been in your family for generations and--”

“And my family has done plenty to destroy this galaxy.”

Leia walks over to her, contemplative, and holds the weapon, hilt grip first, out towards Rey.

“Someone else should hold this now. Someone else should have a chance.”

Rey stands to accept it - she has to, as Leia’s made sure to hold it just out of Rey’s reach on her selected perch.

“Luke would be proud of you.” Leia smiles up at her and pulls her down into a hug, grip still strong despite her small stature and poor health.

Staring out into the jungle over Leia’s shoulder, Rey feels a single tear slip down her cheek.

She knows that isn’t true.

***

Later, after they’ve returned to the Dameron compound, Leia retiring to take her afternoon rest (“A tradition of the colony,” she insists whenever anyone asks her about it), Rey remains in the middle of the front lawn, her back to the main house, her eyes fixed in the distance, towards the place she’s been too wary to visit since they arrived four months ago.

Poe had talked to her about it within three days of their meeting, but something inside of her had shut down at the thought. He hadn’t tried again, which she appreciated, but now she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to ask about it.

As though the thought had summoned him, Poe emerges from the trees to the east, approaching her from behind. She doesn’t look to confirm that it’s him, she just knows that it is him, the Force weaving around the pilot the way it weaves around no one else. Poe and Finn have equally unique signatures, as does Leia. Other friends are harder to discern, but Rey gets better at it all the time.

Finn is her best friend, so it makes sense that she can find his signature a mile off.

Leia is one of the strongest Force users alive, so the way she shines and affects the Force around her is a given.

Poe though -

The moment Rey met Poe, she felt his signature click into place; it was odd, like a melody she didn’t quite remember learning, or a rhyme that was never taught to her that she knew all the same. Something about him felt familiar in an inexplicable way, and that very same familiarity had blocked her from growing as close to him as she was to Finn.

“Hey there, Dameron.”

“Not that impressive when you consider there are two of us.”

“Are you saying I’m not very impressive?”

Rey smiles though at his teasing. He’s the only person besides Finn who teases her at all; the rest of the Resistance, which still grows daily in numbers, is somewhat afraid of her. Not in a negative way. Just a palpable one.

“I’m just saying with only five of us staying here, you had a fifty/fifty chance of getting that one right.” He comes to stand at her shoulder, and he smiles at her. “...But it is impressive.”

She fights the urge to make a face at him, and feels a strange, sticky regret that he didn’t bump her shoulder the way he’d bump Finn or Rose or Kes’s shoulder. He’d done it once, almost a year ago, and Rey had flinched so hard that he’d spent the better part of ten minutes apologizing, his face redder than the surface of Crait, and he’d avoided her for three days afterwards.

He hasn’t touched her since, which feels...uncomfortable. Poe touches everyone, almost as though he can’t contain his affection, which then spills out to shoulder bumps and hands clapped to backs and quick, unexpected hugs.

Poe only ever uses his words to communicate with her, and she doesn’t quite know why that makes her feel so lonely, not when she actively avoids touching anyone and everyone who isn’t named Finn or Leia.

“Poe?”

Something in him stutters when she says his name, which makes her frown for a second; his signature flares briefly before settling, and when she studies his face, he doesn’t meet her gaze.

“Yeah, Sunshine?”

That nickname - after he realized she didn’t like to be touched without warning, he’d shifted to using _nicknames._ She’d smacked him with a hydrospanner when he’d tried “Rey-diant,” thrown a piece of bread at him for “Jedi Girl” (and had promptly grabbed the piece of bread from the floor and scarfed it down, unwilling to really waste food), and kicked his shin (less hard than she could have) for “Light of the Resistance.”

Sunshine had stuck, somehow, and Rey doesn’t even bother to pretend to hate it anymore.

“Can you…” She bites her lip, afraid that he’ll think her capricious for having changed her mind nearly a year later. “I’d like to see the tree.”

“The Force tree?” Poe asks, searching her face for answers, and Rey nods, her hands folded in front of her.

“Only if you want to take me there. I just - I finished the lightsaber today--”

“--No way!” Poe grins with genuine excitement and glances down to where it’s clipped to her belt. “That’s amazing, Sunshine, I knew you’d get it!”

“I wasn’t so sure.” She laughs somewhat bitterly, but Poe’s kind smile doesn’t deviate. Her cheeks flushing, she clears her throat to continue, almost forgetting what they were talking about even though she’d brought it up.

“Did you want to go now?” He asks, still radiating kindness and assurance. Rey nods, and he shifts and turns, pointing in the direction he’d just come.

Rey feels too nervous to talk, again. It’s another strange thing about Poe; things tend to get all twisted up inside her when they talk. Rey isn’t sure it’s a good thing, and it only really happens with him. She doesn’t like to feel wrong-footed, so sometimes she doesn’t talk at all when she’s near him, and for whatever reason, he doesn’t take her silence as a dismissal or an invitation to fill the space with his own talking. He just works with her quietly when she gets like that, a steady, constant companion that she doesn’t know how to handle.

They walk quietly now, Poe not appearing anxious at all, exuding much more calm than she is. The undergrowth grows thicker and thicker, but the path is clear and uncrowded, a testament to how often Poe or his father must walk it.

After ten minutes of walking, they arrive to a clearing, and Poe hangs back. He shakes his head when she gives him an inquisitive look.

“You go on ahead. It’s pretty personal...well. You’ll see.” He gestures for her to keep walking with a smile. “Go on. I’ll wait here.”

“Okay.” Rey smiles at him uncertainly over her shoulder and follows the path that winds to the middle of the clearing, grass waving around her as she approaches the tree.

It’s beautiful in a way that the one on Ahch-To hadn’t been; well cared for and humming with the promise of life and strangely glowing although there doesn’t seem to be any light source.

Rey circles the trunk once when she arrives to it and studies the branches that do not wave overhead, at least, that do not wave with the wind that passes through the clearing. They move individually of each other, a dance that seems altogether natural despite the way it ignores the air around it, and Rey smiles with an inexplicable fondness.

She can see Poe at the edge of the clearing, now sitting on the ground and studying something in front of him. Rey considers calling out to him, to get his expertise on how to commune with the tree, but thinks better of it.

Holding a hand out to the bark, Rey closes her eyes and reaches out, the way Luke both had and hadn’t taught her.

Within moments, she’s found it. The Force. Both bigger and smaller than she’s ever felt it, every beat and rhythm and perfect mistake of the galaxy winnowing down to this one point.

 _“Hello, child._ ”

  
  
  
  



	2. Visions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tree shows Rey a number of visions and brings her a visitor through the Force.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still hyped up by the trailer yesterday, so here's another chapter!!!
> 
>  
> 
>  **Warnings**  
>  References to canonical torture  
> References to canonical death in childbirth  
> Slavery/branding mention

_ Hello, child. What is it you seek? _

The truth. Her place in all this. Answers. 

Shame courses through her because none of those choices are quite right - it all comes down to her biggest weakness, the kernel of doubt inside of her she’s never been able to shake, the idea that she isn’t enough, she’ll never be enough to make  _ anyone  _ stay.

Jedi don’t do attachment. The way of the Jedi is perfect for a nobody whom nobody could  _ love _ \--

She can’t lie to the Force. It sees right through her.

_ Do not be afraid of this part of yourself. It is part of you, and of so many. There is another with the same fear; his mistakes will not be your own. _

“Are you talking about B--”

Rey opens her eyes, expecting to see bark and feel the tacky humidity of Yavin 4 on her skin.

Instead, she finds herself suspended in a golden web of light, that spans infinitely around her, dazzling yet intensely calming. 

_ You cannot fear what has not happened; fear is what makes it happen.  _

“I don’t understand--” A tendril of light reaches out to her, and she reaches back and finds herself on --

Jakku. 

At least, she thinks it’s Jakku. The air feels different though, the light brighter than it ever was. Shielding her eyes, she notices something strange about the buildings around her, the small structures erected in the face of the barren desert.

They have two shadows.

And when she looks behind herself, she sees a dual shadow stretching across the sand, layers of shade created by twin suns. 

Not Jakku.

“Get to work, boy!” Someone roars, and she flinches, the voice too familiar to Unkar Plutt. Her hand instinctively goes to her staff, but all she finds is her lightsaber. 

Across the narrow road she stands on, a tiny boy of six or seven climbs up a treacherous pile of scrap to grab a piece of durasteel. He raps on it with an assured fist and then seizes it, the pile teetering dangerously. Rey darts forward, wanting to help him, but the pile collapses.

“No!” 

The cry barely leaves her throat before the boy lands on his feet. Unlike the other visions she’s been handed by the Force, though, Rey discovers that she is not a passive witness to this scene.

The boy looks at her, eyes squinting in confusion, freckled cheeks flushing from the heat of the day, his blonde hair tousled by the dry wind. 

“Are you an angel?” He asks quietly, his voice barely reaching her across the five feet that separate them, and Rey doesn’t know how to answer.

_ You are not the only one who watches.  _

A shadow passes over them, and the boy shivers, his eyes not leaving her face; interest and yearning mix together, and he absentmindedly scratches at the inside of his forearm where a fresh brand is burnt into delicate skin. Rey can’t control the surge of rage she feels at the sight, at the empathy that boils inside her as her hand goes to her right hip where a similar scar has never faded. 

“Where’s that scrap, boy?” The nasty voice shouts again. “Or do I need to send your mother to trade for it?”

“Run.” The boy nods firmly to himself, hands fidgeting with the scrap he’d pulled. “Run, and never come back. I’ll distract Watto!” 

He scrambles into action, flapping a hand to the west before turning and darting into the shelter behind him. Rey runs after him, hand on her lightsaber, fully intending to liberate the boy and his mother, but when she runs through the doorway, she’s no longer in the desert.

The air is stained with the scent of blood here, and grief and love in equal measure pulsate through the Force from two distinct sources.

A woman’s body lies suspended on an outdated silver examination table, and from the corner of the room, a squall arises. Two voices cry out for their mother in the Force, and Rey shivers at their unexpected familiarity.

She approaches, not fully understanding what she’s seeing until she lays eyes on the beautiful face of the dying woman. The face is familiar, heartbreakingly so, and she’s overcome with the urge to help her.

Kneeling at the woman’s side, a man sobs openly, muttering something here and there, something that sounds like an incantation, paying no heed to the droids who roll around them, droids who were clearly unable to save this woman.

Rey walks silently, afraid that she’ll be seen again, unsure why the Force is showing  _ this  _ to her, this grief she has no name for welling up inside her at a woman she’s never seen before, and without meaning to, she listens in more closely on the weeping man.

“... _ please, not her -- not -- not Padme, please, you’ve taken everyone from me. Qui-Gon. Satine. Even Anak--.”  _ He wipes his face on the last name, shaking his head.  _ “I’ve tried not to question you, I’ve tried, but please, let this test pass over me. Do not give me this test. I’m not strong enough. They need their mother. I am not a father, I was never meant to be a father, I gave away my chance at that life to serve you. Please don’t take her from them. Please. _

_ “Take me. Take my life into the Force and spare her. Don’t steal her now, not when she has so much more -- the Jedi are dead. Padme Amidala should live. The galaxy needs her, not another failure. Please.” _

“Obi?” The woman speaks softly, and he gasps, surging up to his feet, clasping the woman’s hand.

Hope bursts out from him in an unbearable array of light in the Force, almost painful bright in intensity as he hovers over her. 

“Take care of them, Obi. Promise me.”

“We’ll take care of them together, Padme.” He brushes a trembling hand over her forehead, smoothing back pieces of sweat-darkened hair, a tender gesture that feels like every ounce of love Rey’s never been shown, and her heart staggers with unexpected jealousy, a jealousy that seems to have no place here. “I promise.”

“No, Obi. It’s you.” She doesn’t open her eyes, and the hope that had flared with such strength moments ago dampens and twists into open grief, jagged and eviscerating the man. Obi. The woman -- Padme -- sighs and struggles on her next breath.

“Live, Padme. I’m begging you. Live.”

“My children will live.”

“There’s no reason why you can’t--” His shoulders are shaking openly, but he shakes his head. “I love you. And I will find you again, in the Force. I’ll help your children find you.”

She doesn’t take another breath. The man cries with such ragged disbelief and pain that Rey has to close her eyes. 

When she opens them, she’s across from Kylo Ren.

“That’s mine.” He reaches out for her lightsaber, but another voice pushes him back.

_ Someone else should hold this now. _

With a howl, he’s thrown backwards, and Rey runs after him down a poorly lit corridor, turning the corner and running past The Chair --

She pauses.

A man is strapped to the Chair, sweating profusely, whispering under his breath in a language she’s heard a lot of in the past year.

“Poe!” Rey forgets who she was chasing as she sprints to her friend and tries to pry the metal cuffs open. “Oh goddess, Poe--”

He’s bleeding from the hairline and the nose, his eyes bloodshot, and his  _ fingernails  _ -

She hiccups, her breath growing uneven as she fights against the dread in her stomach, a feeling that only rises with the shadow behind her. Throwing an arm out across Poe defensively, she pivots, lightsaber in her hand, and scowls at Kylo Ren, who has come to collect his prisoner’s thoughts.

“You won’t touch him,” Rey hisses, and Poe shudders under her hand.

“I won’t need to.” Kylo tilts his head and reaches out with his hand. Poe screams in agony beside her, and Rey screams in anger; it ripples out from her and knocks Kylo backwards again, and she advances, the scene crackling and shifting to a snow-covered forest.

In the distance, a sea of lava churns. Behind her, Finn groans in the snow, vulnerable and wounded; she’s seized with the urge to protect and avenge. 

Kicking her opponent down a snowy hill, Rey leaps up onto a jagged stump of a tree, lightsaber raised above her head, as Kylo rolls to a stop at the edge of the lava.

“It’s over,” she calls in a voice that isn’t entirely her own. “I have the higher ground.”

_ Do you? _

The lava rises up but doesn’t swallow Kylo, or Ben, whoever it is groaning in pain at her feet. Instead, it reaches up for the forest, now dense and lush and green.

Yavin 4 burns.

Rey watches, frozen, horrified, as the beautiful moon succumbs to the fire, Kylo standing in the middle of the conflagration, his helmet thrown to the side, sinking through the flames. 

“Run,” he urges her, fire licking around his black robes. It’s the second time today she’s seen a vision telling her to run. “Run, little Rey.”

She turns and runs along a dirt-covered surface, the trees vanishing and giving way to mountains that rise up towards a cloudy sky. The scream of an engine follows her; when she looks over her shoulder for a moment, she sees it bearing down on her. A TIE-Silencer. Kylo’s ship.

_ Trust in the Force, Rey.  _

Rey doesn’t know much about trust, but she can feel the heat of the ship at her back, and throwing all caution to the wind, Rey leaps upward, twisting in the air, an impossible move that will leave her crushed and broken against the Silencer.

Instead, a hand grips her own and pulls her upwards, violently.

For the first time since the visions began, Rey feels herself settle and anchor to a specific point in the Force, the golden light weaving around her again, in a different pattern. Between the light, a figure takes shape, the one who’d grabbed her and saved her from certain death. 

It’s the man who’d wept at Padme Amidala’s side.

As he solidifies into something that’s not quite real, he studies her face with open interest, his beard doing little to hide the quirk of his lips in his handsome face. 

“Have we met?” He asks, frowning slightly.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think I’d remember meeting another Jedi.” Rey eyes the lightsaber that flashes into view, barely hidden by his long robes.

“Fair enough.” He tilts his head back, and the curious light doesn’t leave his eyes. “My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“I’m Rey.” She shifts awkwardly, embarrassed not for the first time of her lack of a last name. The man across from her has a name that sounds almost regal, after all. She feels...strangely dingy in comparison. 

“I know.” That’s not the first time she’s heard that in response to her name, and it oddly makes Rey smile. “You face a difficult challenge, Rey. I believe the Force brought me here to help you through your next steps.”

_ These are your first -- _

“Hang on. Did you - did you speak to me through Anakin’s lightsaber?” Rey holds the weapon out with a frown, and Obi-Wan looks at it warily. “You said something like that. That finding this was my first step--”

“I had hoped that you would be able to do what I could not.” Obi-Wan rubs his beard thoughtfully and sighs. “It seems that death affords me no more wisdom than I had in life.”

“What did you need me to do that  _ you  _ couldn’t?” 

Obi-Wan Kenobi had been a hero of the Clone Wars, a true Jedi Master, a Knight beyond compare, the stuff of legends. 

If  _ he  _ couldn’t do something...

“A number of years ago, I failed to save my Padawan from falling into Darkness. I loved him dearly, and that love blinded me to reality. Anakin Skywalker. I foolishly thought that you would save his grandson.”

“Ben.” The name sinks heavily in Rey’s chest, and the arm holding the lightsaber out retracts. “You wanted this lightsaber to go to Ben.”

“No.” Obi-Wan shakes his head. “The lightsaber is yours. I was mistaken. It’s not your task to save Kylo Ren.”

“He’s Kylo Ren, then. It’s over?”

“Over?” Obi-Wan’s smile is strangely warm. “No, it’s only begun.”

“If Ben is truly Kylo Ren--”

“Do not make my mistake, Rey. There is not Kylo Ren  _ and  _ Ben Solo. There is one man, who has made many terrible choices, and who is composed of all of the good and bad that ever existed inside of him. The name he chose is Kylo Ren, but he has always been Kylo Ren, just as he has always been Ben Solo. There is no split, no separation. The only pain and suffering of division that you feel when you reach out to him is caused by his attempts to separate those parts of himself. If he fails to reconcile those parts - and if you fail to reconcile them as well - he will truly be irredeemable. And so will we all.”

“Your mistake?” Rey circles back, exhausted from the visions she’s seen, confused by the way Obi-Wan speaks, as though he wants to fit as much information in as he can while being as mysterious as he can. 

“I was mistaken when confronting my Padawan about his own descent into Darkness. People are not fully Light or Dark. Achieving a balance between them is much more important than becoming one or the other. I hated Darth Vader and loved Anakin Skywalker, but when I fought him on Mustafar, I did not kill Darth Vader. I merely helped to destroy Anakin, the boy I had raised and trained and cared for. I failed him. Painfully.”

“He failed you,” Rey asserts stubbornly, repeating the words she said to Luke last year on Ahch-To. “He failed you when he fell.”

Obi-Wan’s smile is maddeningly kind. 

“No, Rey. I was no better than Anakin for having learned balance. If anything, I was much more cruel than he was, for I had come to discover balance inside of myself and did not take proper pains to help him find it. I indulged him. I loved him, but I failed to help him come to peace with his flaws. And that wasn’t love.”

“Still, though.” Rey’s mind races ahead of her, as she tries to see clear to the end of this maze the Force Tree handed her. “You loved his children, you cared for them. They loved you. You created something good from that pain.”

“I knew Luke and Leia from a distance. I was too afraid of my own failure, of what would happen if they became too strong in the Force, to be what they needed. And that anxiety, that fear of the Force’s children, lingered in Luke. It’s why he failed you.”

“Luke didn’t--” Rey loses her voice for a moment before shaking her head. “I don’t think that--”

“You’re allowed to be angry.” The figure of Obi-Wan flickers and seems to fade. “The only way to let go of anger is to feel it. You had a right to a teacher, and he took that away from you because of his own pride. I know his failure because it is my own.”

“What should I do?” Rey asks hesitantly, Obi-Wan growing more faint by the second. “To help the Resistance? If I’m the last of the Jedi, how can I help them?”

“Asking that question is the precise way to answer it,” Obi-Wan says cryptically. “I will be with you, Rey. The Force will be with you.”

“But--”

He’s gone, and she’s alone, adrift in the golden light. 

She could  _ scream,  _ she’s so frustrated. Jedi Masters and their  _ need  _ to be cryptic. What in Ri’ia’s name was so wrong with direct answers?

The web around her surges and starts to wind around her, through her, past her. Rey watches it disappear, slithering away into nothingness, and leaving her at the foot of a massive tangle of lights that reach upwards infinitely like the branches of an incomprehensibly massive tree. 

_ You are a child of the Force.  _

“Everyone is.” Rey glares up at the tree. “I’m not - that doesn’t mean anything.”

_ Everything means something. _

“Ugh!” Rey screams, furious, loud, exhausted. Scared. “Just tell me what is you want from me! I can’t do this alone. My whole life, I’ve done everything  _ alone.  _ I don’t  _ want  _ to be the last  _ anything.  _ I don’t want to--” She grabs her lightsaber and hurls it at the tree. “Take it back. I don’t want it.”

_ You will not be alone, my child.  _

The lightsaber is already back on her hip, and Rey shakes her head, tears in her eyes. 

“I’m nobody’s child,” she says, half-sobbing. “I’m the child nobody wanted. I’m nobody.”

_ And that is precisely why you are mine. The child of the Force will save the galaxy.  _

Something warm wraps around her; it feels almost like being near Leia, and Rey feels some of her angered grief falling away. Rey leans forward until her head rests on the trunk of what should be the intangible Force. 

_ It is not an easy burden to bear, but you will never be alone. _

The galaxy races under her skin for an interminable moment, and she can feel all of it:

The Resistance. Leia. Finn. Orphans in the Outer Rim, calling out for compassion. Thousands of Stormtroopers, stolen from their homes, calling for the exact same thing. Ben Solo, shattered and blistered and made cruel by the promise of power. Shadows with no name, and Light with no source. 

She’s aware for the first time since approaching the Force Tree of the forest around her back on Yavin. Sitting at the edge of the path is Poe Dameron, shattered and blistered and made kind by the promise of a better life for people he loves. Another child of the Force.

_ Yes and no. _

Rey releases the tree and stares up into the branches, where millions of souls and the evidence of all life flicker in and out of view. She’s up there, in the branches, no bigger or smaller than any of it, and the fear of that insignificance flares before settling, vanishing almost entirely.

_ Go, my child. Heal what has been hurt. Save those who can still be saved, and know that all that comes to pass is as it ever was. _

She’s falling through space, but the tree doesn’t seem to grow any further away, and with a jolt, Rey startles back into her physical form, gasping for breath.

It’s dark on Yavin 4, the arm of the galaxy stretching over head like a canopy. 

Poe’s still waiting, and he stands quickly when she stumbles to the path. 

“Rey?” He jogs up to her, concern etched on his face. “Kriff, Rey, what happened?”

“Sorry,” she gasps, feeling the exhaustion settling deep into her bones. “I-- I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you wait.” It must have been at least eight hours that she was in the tree. “You didn’t have to-”

“I said I would.” Poe shakes his head and remains a short distance away from her. “I don’t mind waiting for you, Sunshine.”

It’s too much, and tears slip out from her gritty eyes before she can stop them. Rey grits her teeth and wills them away, her body trembling slightly from how tired she is, how her nerves feel flayed open.

“Can I…” Poe clears his throat and fidgets with the edge of his frayed work shirt. “Can I hold you?”

Shock stills her, and Rey stares at him in surprise. “I don’t need to be held,” she says slowly, almost irritated that he’d think her so weak, that he feels the need to  _ ask  _ because he knows she’s that averse to unwanted touch. 

“I get that.” Poe’s eyes don’t leave her face. “But did you want to be held?”

Rey spends a few seconds wondering at the enormity of that question before she nods, once, and then quickly. Poe holds his arms out without hesitation, and Rey steps into them, his arms wrapping around her and anchoring her to this reality at last. 

She presses her nose into his neck and breathes slowly, her mind still spinning unbearably around everything she’d just seen and heard, but Poe doesn’t ask her any questions, just allows her to use him for support for this brief moment, this lapse in her need to demonstrate constant control and independence, his Force signature twining around her and thrumming with something that feels like contentment. 

Rey assumes she’s just projecting and doesn’t comment on it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you thank you thank you for all your kindness with the first chapter!! I have quite the wild ride planned for this, and as always, I'd love to hear what you think/what you predict.
> 
> Also, I swear the plot happens in the next chapter.


	3. A New Mission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey spends a typical day at the Resistance base; she receives her new mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we gooooo!! Plot time!!!!
> 
> The only warning I can think of:  
> Rey struggles with self-image after the events of TFA/TLJ, and she thinks a number of unkind things about herself, regarding her appearance/ her ability to be loved / etc.

Military life with the Resistance isn’t so bad. It’s less work than Rey ever did on Jakku, and the people are nicer, and there’s so much more food.

There’s _apparently_ a meal called breakfast: Rey, who’s never really struggled with waking up in the morning (no, her demons land squarely with the trouble of falling asleep), finds herself barrelling out of the small quarters she shares with no one - one of the few Jedi perks - at least thirty minutes before reveille on the days she spends at the base, and not at the Dameron compound.

This Centaxday nearly a year after Crait is no exception. Rey swings her staff, deep in thought, as she strides down the corridor, choosing to ignore those who stare at her while she passes. Her newly reconstructed lightsaber bounces on her hip, a constant reminder of the weight of her title: the Last of the Jedi. Another bonus to waking up earlier than most of the base is that she can walk through the bottom of the Massassi Temple with less eyes on her.

She likes to spend time by herself, running a hand along the smoothed walls, the ones said to be destroyed in the Yuuzhan Vong invasion seven years ago. The temple is on record of having been annihilated by the invading forces, but in reality, only the top half had been destroyed, and then that top half had been rebuilt by Kes Dameron and a number of Rebellion veterans who had remained on Yavin 4 after Endor.

The temple hums with something that’s not entirely Light; Rey finds it both peculiar and endearing that even Luke Skywalker would have walked these halls and felt what he would probably classify as a disturbance in the Force, and still determined this a fit place to rebel from.

The more she reflects on balance, after all, the more she realizes that real rebellion can never be fully Light, and nor should it try to be. The Rebellion, and now Resistance, was and is composed of flawed beings, none of whom were classifiably pure Light. Their rebellion wasn’t without ill intentions.

Sometimes when Rey stands in the war room, right where Leia should be standing, she can close her eyes and envision a stern woman with red hair, wearing robes of clean white cloth, one who made countless impossible decisions on behalf of galactic freedom, one who hurt a great deal of people to save even more.

She’d brought the woman up to Leia all of one time, and had been met with a curious smile and a _“how do you know who Mon Mothma is_?” It was a question Rey wasn’t sure how to answer, so she hadn’t, and she’s since tried to avoid standing in one place of the temple for too long when she isn’t intensely engaged with work and therefore distracted by the shadows left in the Force.

Rey wanders the bottom half of the temple until she hears the call of reveille, and with slighter greater difficulty than normal, she pulls herself away from the gathering shadows that murmur just at the edge of her sight and head to the mess hall to be first in line.

She’s already sitting with her protein and bread portion, downing her third glass of water of the day in an effort to combat the intense humidity, when her friends show up.

Friends. Plural.

There’s a lot to get used to here in the Resistance, and the abundance of friends is probably the most wonderful.

Rose is the one to scoot in next to her, grinning brighter than the gas giant that looms over the temple. “Good morning!”

“How are you?” Rey smiles at her much smaller friend, who cozies up to her side and reaches for the canteen in the middle of the table.

“Been better. This one saws logs all night, so that’s been tough.” Rose jabs her chin in Finn’s direction, who takes a seat across from the girls.

“I do not.” He points a finger at Rose and then looks over to Rey plaintively. “I don’t snore. I’m a professional, and I’m too dignified to snore.”

“Pull the other one, Finn.”

Poe swings a leg over the bench and drops down next to the former stormtrooper, his plate a little more full than the other three: pilots got more portions, the demands of flight requiring higher caloric intake. He’s too kind to brag about it -- Rey’s certain she’d lord it over everyone if she got extra portions just for being a Jedi.

Probably good that she doesn’t, then.

“Is nobody on my side?” Finn pouts and jabs at his food.

“Technically, I’m _at_ your side,” Poe points out, setting a napkin on his lap.

He closes his eyes for a moment, and, even though it’s not a practice she was brought up in, Rey closes her eyes as well as Poe’s blessing over the meal, namely the bread, washes through the Force, murmured and earnest and well-intentioned.

She opens her eyes to find Poe smiling at her, and he rips his first portion of bread in half and offers her some, the way he does every day; she takes it with a pleased smile and shares it with Rose at her side.

Poe digs in with a little less intensity than Finn or Rey. His strong fingers make the fork he holds look oddly delicate, and Rey realizes suddenly that she’s staring at the way they grip and flex, his thick, blunt fingers moving with more grace than she’d expect at first glance.

Luckily, Poe doesn’t notice. Rose gives her a strange look though that quickly morphs into kindness.

“Did you sleep okay?” She asks, taking an appropriate sized bite of veg-protein. Rey hums and shrugs, and Rose, of course, can’t let it go. “Or was someone keeping _you_ up all night as well?”

Rose Tico has just enough of a cute face that the comment could slip by as totally innocent, but Rey’s ears burn all the same from the hidden implication.

“Uhhh--”

“Rey sleeps alone.” Poe pauses while reaching across the table to grab the mug of juice setting out. “...Right?”

“Right!” Rey nods and shifts on her seat, smiling over at Rose and then at Poe, who’s staring at his cup now, swirling the contents around and probably not even listening to her. “Alone.”

_It’s what I’m good at._

She hasn’t seen Ben/Kylo since Crait, but sometimes, when she feels thoughts rise up in herself that she never would have experienced a year ago on Jakku -- Rey had never had the time to doubt her self-worth when she was struggling to survive -- she thinks that maybe it’s Ben, pushing some brand of Sith negativity through what remains of their Bond, trying to break her down even further than he had in that chair, and in the throne room.

That or she’s honestly doubting her self-worth. Can’t blame everything on the Force, after all.

“You can always bunk with me,” Rose offers generously with a sly grin over at Finn. “...My current partner snores.”

“Hey! For all we know, _Rey_ snores!”

The rest of the meal passes in much the same way, with the four teasing each other here and there for the half hour allotted to breakfast. Towards the end, though, Finn reaches across the table to tangle his fingers with Rose, and Rey looks away as though she’d stumbled across something private.

“Wanna take a walk before we report?” He asks, and Rose nods happily. They grab their trays and disappear from the table, Finn’s arm slung around Rose’s shoulders. He drops kisses into her hair before they leave through the front exit, the one that points towards the jungle, and Rey ignores the way her stomach curdles at the sight.

It’s not that she still has feelings for Finn; she’s examined that over and over again when she should have been meditating. No, it’s more of the easy way they share everything with each other, the fact that Rose is small and lovable and delicate in a way that Rey isn’t, and never will be, the obvious reality that Rose could have very well been designed to be loved in a way that Rey … wasn’t.

Poe watches them leave as well, a sad smile on his full lips, and they exchange a brief look before returning to their food.

Curiosity gets the best of her, like it always does, and Rey clears her throat delicately; Poe sets his fork down in response.

“Do you ever … regret … things not working out?” She nods in the direction Rose and Finn went.

“Uh,” Poe splutters for a second, bright red, and Rey frowns at him.

“We don’t have to talk about it.” She shrugs with a single shoulder. “I just thought...you’re the most social person I know, so I thought maybe you’d experienced it before. Disappointment, I guess?”

“Disappointment about not being with Finn?” Poe gives her a wry smile when she nods. “Yeah. I’m familiar with the concept.”

“Oh!” Rey feels her cheeks heat immediately, and she looks down at the table. “Oh, I had - I actually was just -- for myself -- I didn’t think --”

Poe laughs, but it isn’t unkind, so she relaxes slightly.

“We have a lot in common,” he notes. “Piloting, tempers, _torture_.” The last part is said lightly, but it feels anything but. Rey’s vision from the other day sinks through her stomach like a hot stone. “Makes sense that we’d both get wistful over what might have been with the elusive Finn.”

“I’m not jealous,” Rey says in a rush, not wanting him to think so little of her. “I like Rose, a lot. She’s … she’s a good friend, and she makes Finn happy.” Poe nods, clearly in understanding, and she relaxes. Still though, she feels at odds, which is _why she never talks to Poe about anything real because it isn’t good for her stress levels even though he’s the nicest person she knows._

“I just --” Rey sighs and ducks her head, balling her hands into fists while she squirms internally at getting all _this_ out. “When I came back from Ahch-To, and I saw how he looked at her. I thought...that’s how I look at Finn. I look at Finn like he looks at Rose.” She looks up with a rueful smile. “I think I’d just … like to be looked at...like that.”

Poe blinks, as though shaking himself internally, and his eyes flit across the mess to where Finn and Rose went. “I get it. It was … really similar for me, too. Somehow within half an hour of Finn waking up from that coma, he’s found Rose. Luck, I guess. Then I send them off to Canto Bight, watch more of my friends die, and …”

“I’m sorry,” Rey isn’t sure if she should reach across the table and pat his hand the way Leia does to her when she wants to convey support and affection. “I don’t want to bring up a sore spot for you.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it.” Poe shakes his head, his curls twitching from the movement endearingly. “I mean, it’s … it’s not as bad as it could be. I haven’t been torn up about it in a while, not after….”

“After what?” Rey waits for him to answer and eyes the piece of bread left over on his plate. Poe sees where her eyes go and smiles; he holds it up to her as an offering, and Rey takes it with a genuine smile.

“After I remembered that there are billions of souls in the galaxy, billions of chances to fall in love. And falling in love … it’s not so scary when you…” He fiddles with the necklace he wears, and Rey devours the bread he handed her while waiting for him to finish his thought. “Let’s just say there’s a pretty good candidate.”

“Candidate? You make it sound so romantic.” Rey chases the bread down with her now cold caf and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand indelicately.

Poe hangs his head and huffs a laugh. “I feel like this person doesn’t really do romance, so I’m trying to … reframe my natural instincts, which would probably only scare them off.”

“What would your natural instincts call it then?”

“Destiny.” He doesn’t hesitate this time, and his hand doesn’t leave his necklace. “My instincts are telling me that this person is my soulmate. This person is supposed to be my partner, and that’s why the Force acted the way it did, with the exact events that led me right here.”

Rey’s face heats up at the intensity of his words, and she finds that it’s difficult to maintain eye contact with him, probably because he’s talking about things she always swore she would never have or make time for.

Without realizing it, she leans over the table, her elbows resting on the durasteel.

“When are you going to tell them?” She asks, unsure why her heart is pounding; this must be why people watch those stupid holonovelas that Yavin 4 produces en masse.

Vicarious romance is oddly … anxiety provoking. That must be the reason why Rey feels a sweat building at her hairline.

Poe licks his bottom lip, and Rey’s stomach tightens. She’s honestly on the edge of her seat, which she always thought was a strange expression, and Poe’s eyes seem to darken ever so slightly.

“Soon,” he answers, voice hoarse. It’s a pleasant quality, if one she hasn’t exactly heard before. “I’m going to tell them soon. It’s just...with the war…”

“Feels like the galaxy’s always been at war,” Rey points out. “If the Jedi texts are anything to go by. You shouldn’t wait for the war to end to try and find happiness.”

He grins at her, eyes twinkling, and his elbows prop up on the table as he mirrors Rey’s posture.

“You’re getting awfully wise there, Master Rey.”

She smiles, and then they’re just _smiling_ at each other, which is honestly one of the biggest wastes of time Rey thinks she’s ever willingly participated in, but it also doesn’t exactly feel like a waste of time, feels more like a small star kickstarting in her chest and flooding her with warmth.

Poe’s eyes drift over her face for a second and then dart over his shoulder; his smile changes almost instantaneously, shock widening his eyes.

“Oh, gods--” He leaps up and excuses himself so quickly Rey thinks she’s misheard him.

Confused, she turns to watch him sprint through the mess, hurtling towards a group of people who’ve just walked in. They look familiar, and they’re wearing the orange flightsuit that Poe wears so often, and so well.

_That’s … a weird thought._

A second later, the large man in the back of the group hoots in joy and shouts something at Poe, who shouts back, and then he’s in the midst of the squadron, clapping a few of them on the back.

There’s a tiny, beautiful woman with jet black hair braided down her back whom Poe seems especially overjoyed to see; at least, Rey assumes he’s overjoyed because he scoops her up and swings her around and around and around. Their laughter can be heard clear across the mess hall, and one person nearby mutters, “ _Pava and Dameron. I swear, they should just get married already_ \--” and their friend mutters back, “ _Like Organa would allow that much trouble to reproduce_ \--” and Rey feels wrong-footed again.

She waits for a few moments, really over half a minute -- but Poe keeps an arm looped around Pava’s waist once he’s set her back on the ground, and he chats excitedly with the tall man of the squadron. Rey thinks that must be Snap, whom Poe always speaks so fondly of, and the woman with the short ice blonde hair must be his wife, Karé. Whoever they are, they definitely capture Poe’s interest and attention with ease, so Rey gathers up her tray and heads to the dish disposal, realizing that she isn’t due an introduction with Poe’s friends.

 _And why should she be?_ She aggressively throws her fork into the bin held up by a droid, who then chitters at her scoldingly. Rey pats the little droid in contrition before heading for the back exit, which leads towards the mechanic bay.

Her arms are wrapped around her middle now as she contemplates her work for the rest of the day; two hours on repairs of the old A-Wings, two hours with Kes in the fields, two hours training, two hours meditation. She should have saved the bread Poe gave her as a snack, but it’s too late to loop around and beg the base’s cook for more portions. She’d have to pass by Poe and his squadron, and the last thing she wants is for him to think she’s hanging around, waiting for an introduction he didn’t see fit to make in the first place.

Rey’s so lost in thought that she entirely misses the moment where Poe, one hand on Snap’s arm, turns to where they’d been sitting with a face-splitting grin -- the grin slides off his face when she hits the exit, the doors swinging open as she disappears from view.

“Guess she had somewhere to be,” he mutters, offering Snap and his crew an apologetic smile.

“She looked upset,” Iolo notes, as obnoxiously observant as ever.

Poe studies the exit, fully distracted now, until Karé jabs him in the side and demands that he give them the grand tour of their new barracks. His smile is a little less enthusiastic than it was a second ago, but he acquiesces with unfeigned happiness; and, if his eyes flicker to the direction Rey disappeared in over ten times as they walk towards the barracks, his squadron doesn’t call him on it.

***

“I feel like this might be an improper use of the Force.”

Rey grins down from the branches of the koyo tree, the melon clutched tightly in her hands. “Is that a complaint, old man?”

“Old man?” Kes Dameron clutches his heart and pretends to stagger backwards. “Why, I’m so offended, I just might cry.”

“Don’t cry.” Rey laughs and holds the melon aloft. Kes automatically crouches, hands set, ready to catch the fruit. “Poe will fight me if I make you cry.”

She chucks the melon down, guiding it slightly with the Force, right into Kes’s waiting hands. He hoots in elation and adds it to the growing pile of koyo behind him.

“I don’t know if Poe can fight you,” Kes says as Rey drops from the tree, slipping along the Force so she won’t shatter her knees on impact.

She lands lightly, crouching to absorb some of it, displacing the energy around her in the Force. Grass bends and the wind whistles slightly, and Kes grins at her admiringly.

“I’d go easy on him,” she assures the older Dameron, walking over to help secure the koyo melons to the back of the harvester. She tightens a strap around a crate and smirks at Kes. “...Maybe.”

“It’s not that he wouldn’t be _able_ to fight you,” Kes says while they clamber up to the driver and passenger seat, Kes behind the wheel. They take off down the lane of the orchard, the wind dragging through Rey’s sweaty hair pleasantly. “It’s just that he wouldn’t fight you.”

“Poe’s good for a sparring match.” Rey pops her feet up on the dashboard until Kes fusses at her and smacks an ankle.

“Sparring is different from fighting, and my son wouldn’t fight you.” Kes parks the harvester at the next round of trees. “Trust me, Jedi.”

“Because I’m a girl?” Rey cocks an eyebrow in confusion at him before she hops down.

Poe does _not_ care about gender, sex, species, any of it. He thinks all beings are equal and deserving of equal treatment -- something he’s never voiced, and never had to voice. His every action and decision speaks for him on that subject.

“Because you’re Rey,” Kes says cryptically before walking to a tree laden with Koyo. “Now up you go.”

Rey leaps to the lowest branch, and resumes chucking melons down at Kes. They make a game of it, scoring points for ludicrous throws and even more ludicrous attempts to catch the melons. They’re both laughing hard enough that a flock of birds takes off from the nearby pasture, and that only makes Rey laugh harder.

When she jumps down from the now stripped tree, she accepts the canteen offered by Kes. It’s when she passes him the water that she notices.

Silver, gleaming in the light, exposed by the way Kes has unbuttoned his shirt to combat the heat of the day -- Rey squints at the necklace while the man drinks his fill of the water.

“Poe wears a ring just like that.” She fights the urge to poke at it because she’s relatively new to society, but she’s learned you don’t just go poking at interesting things, especially when they’re on someone’s still breathing body.

Kes gives her an odd look. “Yes?”

“Sorry.” She thinks she might have brought up something she had no right to, so she turns to the harvester. “I just - I’ve noticed that he always wears it.”

“You don’t know about the ring?” There’s an unnecessary emphasis on _you,_ and Rey tries not to rankle at it, if only because Kes Dameron is one of her top five favorite lifeforms. “He hasn’t told you?”

“I suppose he didn’t think I need to know. It seemed rude to just ask.” Rey climbs up into the harvester while Kes finishes up checking their cargo, but when he climbs up next to her, his expression is still thoughtful.

“I thought he would have told you.”

“Guess not.” Rey feels another wave of irritation, and not entirely directed at Kes.

She’s spared further annoyance when the radio crackles to life; Kes grabs it first.

“Kes Dameron here.”

“ _Kes, this is Leia. Is Rey out there with you?_ ”

“Yes ma’am,” Kes drawls, waggling his eyebrows unnecessarily at Rey, who stifles a giggle behind her hand. “We were just talking about taking off from this moon and making a living as Koyo smugglers. What do you think?”

“ _I think you better send Rey up to the temple, old man._ ”

“I’m only five years older than you!” Kes squawks indignantly. “ _Old man._ Is that a thing now?”

“Yes.” Rey and Leia answer at the same time, and they’re rewarded by a rare laugh from Leia.

“ _Rey, we need you to report to Command by 1200._ ”

“Yes, General. I’ll see you then.”

Kes sighs, engaging the engines of the harvester. “Do you need a lift?” He asks, but Leia cuts him off.

“ _I’m sending the younger Dameron your way. He can give Rey a lift.”_

“Arrive in style, I see.” Kes shakes his head and shuts the engines down. “Might as well have a snack, then.”

Rey’s stomach rumbles audibly in response, and Kes laughs delightedly, hopping down to pilfer a few melons from the back.

They’re all gone by the time Poe shows up in a speeder, Kes and Rey both stained at the mouth and fingers with purple juice, and he pushes the goggles up his head to scowl at them.

“You didn’t save me any?”

“Nope!” Rey chortles, sucking her fingers clean.

“Gotta drive faster, kid.” Kes pats Rey on the shoulder and then pats his stomach. “We did good, huh?”

“Thanks, Kes.” Rey smiles warmly at him before hopping down to join Poe on the speeder. “Can I fly us back?”

“No, you may certainly not.” Poe waves at his dad while kicking the engines into gear. “See you tonight!” Kes waves back, and they zip off down the lane.

Rey sighs and pretends to pout until Poe scoffs.

“Fine.” He hands the controls over and sits back; Rey takes over with a thrill of exhilaration, happy to be at the helm. “Just don’t crash this one, please.”

“I maintain that speeder crashed itself,” Rey shouts back over the roar of the wind. Poe’s answer is lost, but Rey’s too busy peering out through the jungle, taking turns too tightly to be considered safe, if the jolt of adrenaline she feels is any indication.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Poe’s at her side again, one hand on the steering column. “Calm down there, Jedi, there’s no prize at the end of this circuit.”

She allows him to stand next to her, co-piloting something that really only needs a single person at the helm, and despite the fact that she really did want to fly today, Rey can’t help but feel pleased to have Poe at her side.

They disembark at the temple hangar, and Poe jumps out first. Rey turns to climb out, but realizes that the port side doesn’t have stairs; it’s not a big deal at all, and she prepares to jump as well, until Poe holds out his hand.

 _I can do it myself,_ part of her wants to grumble, but instead she takes the offered hand and climbs down with slightly more grace than jumping would have given her. Poe’s hand is warm from gripping the controls, calloused from his time in a cockpit and training, and, while they’re almost the same height, his hand is noticeably larger than her own.

Rey stares at where their hands are connected even when her feet have reached the ground, and for a second, she forgets to let go. Poe lets go for her, and he walks for the exit.

“They need us in Command,” he reminds her, the back of his neck red. Strange. She didn’t think Poe could get sunburnt.

***

The meeting begins as soon as they arrive.

General Organa is at the front of the room, arms crossed as she looks up at a star map. Also in attendance are Black Squadron, a number of the remaining high-ranking officials, and, interestingly enough, Finn.

Rey wants to stand next to her friend, but she has a feeling she’s needed up front next to Leia; sure enough, the older woman beckons for her to stand at her right, and Rey goes. Poe stands next to Finn instead, bridging the distance between Black Squadron and the rest of the room, and when he settles, Leia clear her throat. Everyone falls silent.

“Black Squadron has just returned from a long-term mission with significant intel.They have cause to believe that there is another weapon in the galaxy, one of high interest to Kylo Ren and his Knights of Ren.”

Rey twitches at the word _knights,_ her mind somehow rejecting that they’re in any way associated _with_ Kylo. Odd. They’re named for him, after all.

Leia’s lip has curled slightly at the name _Ren,_ and Rey forces herself to focus, so that Leia doesn’t have to repeat anything she doesn’t want to.

“Another weapon?” Poe scowls up at the star map and shakes his head. “Wasn’t Starkiller enough? They had to build a new one?”

_Poe, in the chair, bleeding, crying out for dead friends, for the pain in his head --_

Rey blinks to clear the vision that sprung unbidden to her mind.

“This would actually be an old one, if the intel is correct.” Leia sighs heavily, and flicks her wrist so the star map zooms in. “It’s some sort of Sith weapon, one that Snoke had sent the Knights after before his … untimely demise, and the beginning of the new Supreme Leader’s regime.”

Leia’s hand tightens on her cane imperceptibly; Rey only notices because she’s standing right next to her. Instinctively, she leans in to Leia’s side, offering silent support, and to her surprise, Leia leans in to accept it.

“We found whispers of the weapon on Brentaal,” Karé breaks in, her finger lifting to point at a planet in the star map, which then lights up. “It was a hub for Empire activity before the battle of Yavin, where their brightest minds trained; several of those minds were instrumental in constructing the first Death Star. If one of their officers discovered the secret of the Sith Weapon…”

“The only thing is, the whispers we found led us to a path that only a Jedi can take,” Snap finishes for his wife, frowning towards Rey, almost apologetic. “An old temple on Brentaal, from the time before the Republic, frequented by Sith and Jedi alike. We couldn’t make sense of it. Couldn’t even get in.”

“That’s where you come in, Rey.” Leia doesn’t move her eyes from the star map, but Rey feels her presence wrap around her all the same. “We need you to discover the secret of the Sith weapon, and if possible, go to its true location - whether or not its on Brentaal.”

“And then destroy it?” Rey guesses, her stomach flipping unpleasantly at the thought of failing in this task.

“Maybe.” Leia shakes her head and finally looks over at her. “We should probably find out what it is, first. Many things become dangerous weapons in the hands of the wrong people. There’s no reason why it couldn’t be something that could help the Resistance.”

_Don’t listen to them._

A voice rises in Rey’s mind, one entirely unfamiliar, hoarse, desperate.

She pushes it away and prays that Leia didn’t catch onto the surprise that just rippled through her. It was probably just one of the lingering shadows of the temple, after all. No need for concern.

“Brentaal is at location L-9,” Karé continues, reaching over to type something at the edge of the star map’s projector. A path lights up from Yavin 4 to Brentaal. “Should be less than a day’s jump in Hyperspace.”

“Black Squadron has offered to accompany you to Brentaal. There, you -- and Finn and Poe, if they accept the mission -- will collect whatever information you can from the surface. Like I said before, though, the Knights of Ren are also interested in this information; and they are among the most dangerous individuals in the galaxy. It won’t be easy to escape them, but you’ll have some friends there to help you make some noise if need be.”

She’ll be going with Finn and Poe. An unexpected assortment of Resistance members, but people she trusts more than anyone else; that must be Leia’s reason for selecting them. Finn’s grinning widely at her, his excitement palpable in the Force, but Poe’s reaction is more muted, his eyes fixed up at the star map and his expression giving away none of his thoughts.

“You won’t be entirely alone on the planet, either,” Leia adds, tugging on Rey’s sleeve. “I have a secret weapon of my own there.”

“A secret weapon?”

Leia hides a smile behind her hand. “An old friend. Trust me, you’ll hate him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for the incredible outpouring of support; I'm so happy that people want to join me on this wild ride of speculating Episode IX plot points (although I'll be doing some ... bold things that I don't think JJ will have the time to do...lots of EU things being tied in here)
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> Let me know what you thought; and, as always, I love hearing predictions!


	4. Brentaal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey begins the next step of her journey as she tries to find the possible war-ending weapon before the First Order does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Notes_
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> Sorry this took so long to update! Allergy season = lots of migraines and I wanted to wait to be as clear-headed as possible before writing this because there are *so many pieces* that have to fall into place for this to work!!! Thank you for your amazing support and patience!!
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> ***= time jump, as usual
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> **Warnings**
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> References to adults drinking/being drunk (Alcohol TW)
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> Disturbing Force visions
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> Mention of blood, very brief at end.

They depart six hours after the meeting, so they can spend an adequate portion of their jump in Hyperspace sleeping at a moderately normal, Standard time. While Yavin hovers low in the sky outside the hangar, Rey pats the Falcon’s ramp control panel fondly as she waits for Finn to finish up his goodbyes; she has a feeling that at the end of all this, it’s going to be her and this old girl, while Finn and Rose scamper off onto bigger and better things, and Poe, well, Poe…

Rey frowns, wondering when it was that she became so preoccupied with Poe Dameron’s plans after the war.

She heard him, once, talking about how he doesn’t intend for there to be an _after._

He’d been murmuring quietly to Finn, on the walk back from the cantina after a rousing night of drinking and singing and dancing -- Rey had abstained from the former two, but not the latter, and spent a solid minute being spun around and around and around by the Resistance’s best pilot before she’d forfeited, laughing happily, and returned to waltzing in a more stately way with Rose -- and hadn’t realized Rey had crept up behind them on their stroll.

 _“You and Rosie, you’ll be fine,_ ” Poe had mumbled, a little more drunk than Rey had realized.

It was odd, as she’d spent a solid portion of her childhood surrounded by drunken men who’d made her wary of any alcohol. But Poe hadn’t shown a single sign of the demon of drunkenness that possessed most men when inebriated -- if anything, he’d simply grown more affectionate under the thrall of drink.

 _“And you too,_ ” Finn had said graciously, arm wrapped around his friend.

 _“Not -- I don’t think -- the Force has other plans for me,_ ” Poe murmured, “ _I’m a child of war. I was born in war, and I’ll die in war.”_

 _“Nah. The Force’ll see you through. It’s carried you this far.”_ Finn prodded him in the side. _“Lucky bastard._ ”

Rey had watched as Poe shoved Finn away playfully, but when he turned and saw her following them, his smile shifted ever so slightly, and that shift cut at her like a knife.

Now, weeks later, she watches as he hugs his father tight at the bottom of the Falcon’s loading ramp, tears in both of the Damerons’ eyes, but neither of them saying a word. The Force curves fondly around the men, an intimacy that hurts Rey to look at, but she makes herself look at all the same.

 _This is a family,_ she tells herself. _This is what you’ll never have._

Finn’s kissing Rose passionately while Chewbacca grumbles a farewell to Kalonia -- she wonders when the doctor will realize the Wookiee has a crush on her, it’s painfully obvious to anyone looking, and she knows kriff-all about romance -- and a stone’s throw over, Black Squadron is loading up their X-Wings, the ones Rey’s spent the better part of three months re-building and maintaining for long-distance jumps just like this one. She doesn’t envy them a day long jump in Hyperspace, crowded up in the cockpit like that; they’ll be stopping halfway to stretch their legs and exercise to avoid atrophy, a three hour berth that they’ll spend up in atmo, waiting to descend on Brentaal until their back-up arrives.

The hangar hums with the feeling of goodbye, and Rey allows herself one last look over the place that has become like a home to her in the last year; she’ll miss the mechanics’ bay, and the forest that stretches on for miles outside, the lakes and rivers, the chubby little Woolamanders that boldly sit in her lap while she meditates. It feels strange, like she won’t be coming back anytime soon, and the idea that this might be a legitimate warning from the Force brings a lump to her throat that she steadfastly refuses to analyze. She’d left Jakku behind fairly easily, regardless of her grief at her parents’ unmarked grave (Kylo’s taunts ringing in her ears), but _this._ She’s spent not even a full Standard year here, but this place feels like home in a way a collapsed AT-AT never could, and Rey can’t begin to imagine why.

She’s fiddling with the control panel now, trying to knock a small circuit panel into a better positon, giving her hands something to do and her brain something to think about that isn’t _feelings,_ when she hears her name being called.

“C’mere, Jedi!” Kes waves at her enthusiastically, and Poe stands to the side, his face bright red.

Rey frowns, knowing that Poe’s probably suppressing his anxiety at leaving his father behind for the umpteenth time in his life (and as someone with no parents, and as someone who’s only ever been left behind, she can only imagine how painful it is to leave a parent behind).

She points at herself, stupidly, as if there’s any other Jedi in this hangar, or in the galaxy, and Kes grins and nods, still waving frantically. Rey shrugs and slams the control panel shut before heading down the ramp quickly, figuring they need her to lift something through the Force.

It catches her by surprise when Kes launches himself at her, throwing his arms around her shoulders and squeezing her tight. For a full three seconds, Rey doesn’t know how to respond, but she wraps her arms around Kes’s middle and squeezes him back. Kes laughs, a wet sound that she won’t call him on, and on instinct, Rey lifts the slightly taller man off the ground, and his laugh becomes more boisterous.

“Showoff,” he says admiringly as she sets him back down and releases him; he studies her face fondly, the creases in his own an interesting blueprint of the way time will treat Poe Dameron if he makes it through this war. “Didn’t think I’d let you leave without a goodbye, huh?”

“I--” Rey begins, blushing, not wanting him to think that she was being rude by staying up on the Falcon. “Sorry, I just thought you’d … want to say bye to Poe, privately, and--”

“Privately?” Kes shakes his head and puts a warm hand on her bare shoulder. “Mija, I wanted to say goodbye to you, too. This old man is going to miss you.”

“Don’t eat all the koyo without me,” Rey says weakly, unsure of what else to say, and she regrets it, but it draws a laugh from Kes.

A second later, she throws her arms around him again, and Kes releases a soft sound as if he knows that she rarely is the person who initiates physical contact, always the person who’s giving permission or receiving it, and his hug is softer this time, his chin nesting on her shoulder with a comforting sigh.

Rey doesn’t wipe her eyes when she pulls away, if only because she’s good at shoving things into a corner of her body where she’ll never have to look at them, and she waves awkwardly to Kes before heading back up the loading ramp. Rose had given her a hug an hour ago and her favorite multi-tool in case it came in handy, and even Leia had smiled a rare smile while whispering “ _May the Force be with you._ ”

For the first time in Rey’s life, she feels wealthy.

They draw straws to see who will rest first, and Chewbacca and Finn draw second shift, so she and Poe pile into the cockpit and engage in a brief, vicious game of rock, parchment, lightsaber -- Poe wins using rock, the bastard, and Rey turns her pointer-finger-lightsaber into her middle finger, which he barks a laugh at. Rey shoves his arm and pretends not to be amused by his delight.

With nothing to keep her hands busy, though, Rey becomes dangerously thoughtful during the launch initiation; she looks out the viewer to the gathered crowd, the X-Wings rising up behind the Falcon like the plumes of feather behind a real bird, and a pang of nostalgia hits her chest at the same time a thought occurs to her.

“Poe?” Rey asks quietly, her knees drawn up to her chest while he guides the Falcon up through atmo.

He doesn’t respond right away, distracted by calculating the vectors for their first jump once they hit open space -- BB-8 runs a back-up calculation, she knows, but Poe’s odd in that he likes to do the numbers himself, a callback to his days as the star cadet at the Flight Academy -- but he tilts his head towards her after a few seconds, his eyes on the controls.

“Yeah?”

“Back in the hangar,” she begins and swallows, doubting if she actually wants to ask this question because it’s a stupid question, what if it’s a stupid question, “Your dad said something in Yavini?”

“Hmm?” He doesn’t look up from his calculation. “What was it?”

“Mija?”

Poe blinks and sits back slightly, still lost in thought. “It means my child.”

“Oh.”

Rey covers her mouth with her hand, overcome with stupid, useless emotions that have no place here in the cockpit of the most famous smuggler vessel in the galaxy - she doubts Han Solo ever cried - her other hand gripping the armrest of her seat. Her back teeth clench together, and she swallows drily, refusing to blink, relying on the tricks she’d gathered as a young Scavenger where every drop of moisture mattered in the desert, where tears were a luxury she couldn’t afford, no matter how bad the pain got.

Poe looks up half a beat later, but she’s staring out the front-viewer. He doesn’t say a thing, which she appreciates.

But, he does reach across the space between them to cover her hand with his own, larger, calloused hand, and his thumb brushes across her knuckles with a delicacy she never thought could be applied to herself, and she appreciates that, too.

***

They land on Brentaal with little to no fuss, as the confluence of the Hydian Way and the Perlemian Trade Route exists near very little debris or traffic, but Rey can’t stop the prickling feeling on the back of her neck. _Something_ is going to happen, and she can’t get a read on whether it’s good or bad. She whispers as much to Poe and Finn as they prepare to disembark, and Poe nods curtly while Finn offers her a comforting smile.

“Anything thrown our way, we can handle,” he promises.

“Our objective is to reach the temple two hours before sundown.” Poe isn’t wasting time on comfort, which Rey finds oddly comforting in its own way. Business as usual. He pulls up a holo-map of the terrain on his hand-held and spins it to face Rey and Finn at a clearer angle. “We can’t approach from the sky because apparently the Sith booby-trapped it all to the hells centuries ago. Better to come in on foot with our guide.”

“Guide?” Rey asks curiously. “Leia’s friend?”

“The one and the same. Apparently there’s a city not too far from here, one they rebuilt from Imperial control, that he’s more or less … mayor of.” Poe shrugs as if that explains it, but Rey’s never heard the word _mayor_ in her life. She exchanges a look with Finn, who looks similarly confused, but neither of them ask. “Guess he got tired of wasting time on the clouds,” Poe grumbles, but it seems mostly to himself.

After a pause where his brows furrow, he looks up at Rey; for a second, it looks like he’s frowning at her, but she can’t sense any irritation through the Force. Just a sense … resignation. “He’s very charming,” Poe warns, as if that was any kind of warning. “Be on guard. This is Han Solo’s best enemy, after all.”

“Best enemy?” Rey asks curiously, but they’re already heading down the ramp, Poe in front, hand on his blaster as he scans the terrain. Finn shrugs and follows, his blaster out and in his hands, ready to fire. Rey rolls her eyes and follows the boys, not sensing any kind of danger in their proximity (not that her assurance of it could convince Poe to let BB-8 accompany them on this part of the mission).

Still though, something hovers at the edge of her consciousness, not quite a call, not quite a warning. Rey tucks it away to examine later, and tries to clear her mind to focus on the here and now.

“Incoming,” Poe says suddenly, and his blaster is in his hands, trained on the trees to their left. Finn adjusts his stance, and Rey hasn’t even made it off the ramp yet, but she still can’t sense any kind of danger.

“They’re friendly,” she assures the two with a roll of her eyes, striding down off the ramp and pushing past them. “Honestly.”

“You don’t know that--” Poe snaps, and she can’t be bothered to look over her shoulder at him because an older man is pushing through the trees, very confusingly dressed in a cape and fine velvet pants.

“Poe!” The man spreads his hands with a beaming smile. “Long time no see, gorgeous.”

“Lando.” Rey can hear Finn holstering his blaster, but Poe keeps his in his hands. “There’s probably a reason for that.”

“Oh, don’t be like that.” Lando says with a smarm that Rey finds admittedly very impressive. There’s zero bite under anything he does, and his Force signature is elastic, vibrant, and entirely unlike anything she’s ever seen. “Let bygones be bygones?”

“Me waking up with no ship on a godforsaken planet does not, and will never, qualify as bygones.”

“You were so cute back then,” Lando sighs, shaking his head. “How old were you? Twenty? Twenty-one?”

Something clicks in Rey’s brain, and she flushes with excitement -- “You’re Lando _Calrissian_?” She bounces on her feet excitedly. “You’re one of the greatest smugglers of all time!”

“The greatest.” Lando grins at her, and there’s something incredibly soft in his eyes that she realizes could never be feigned. “I take it you’re the baby Jedi Leia speaks so fondly of?”

She nods, still flustered to be in the presence of _the_ Lando Calrissian, and Poe comes to stand at her shoulder like a shadow, and Finn isn’t too far behind.

“I knew Luke,” Lando comments off-handedly, the same tenderness in his eyes. “Good kid. Real good kid. Sorry to hear about…” He trails off and adjusts his cape before smiling again, a performer through and through. “I hear you need to get to the creepy old temple that nobody in my city wants to get near with a fifteen-rancor pack?”

“That’s the one,” Finn pipes up, a ripple of excitement extending from him, probably for the same reason as Rey. Poe seems to be the only person left who’s beyond wary.

At that moment, Black Squadron lands, and a few minutes later, they’re all gathered behind Poe, Finn, and Rey -- Snap and Kare, Iolo, and Jessika Pava -- ready to accompany them on their trek to the temple.

Poe hangs back to talk logistics with his old team, and Rey and Finn walk ahead with Lando; Rey knows she should be paying more attention to the path, to what lurks around the path, but she’s too busy peppering Lando with questions about the Falcon, his days as a smuggler, his time as a war hero, and his knowledge of Han Solo. The old man speaks with a fondness that makes Rey’s teeth ache -- no matter what Poe claims about _enemies,_ it’s a clear a deep and abiding love existed between the two men, the nature of which is murky to Rey, but its significance clear and apparent.

Lando pauses now and then in a story if it mentions Luke Skywalker, clearly waiting for her to ask _and what was Luke like?_ When she doesn’t ask, he doesn’t comment, but his shrewd expression tells Rey that her silence on that front is more than telling.

Once, she looks over her shoulder to see if Poe’s going to catch up with her and Finn, but he’s hanging back with Black Squadron, their calm and steady expressions suggesting that they’re all ready for the worst, but accepting of that fate if it appears -- they’ll have each others’ backs, she realizes, and that’s why they’re not afraid. None of them afraid to die if it means saving the others. There are holes in this group -- ones she would notice the existence of, even if Poe hadn’t spoken haltingly of his friends who had died -- and they haven’t disappeared or even scabbed over.

The love for the people they’ve lost still exists, present and aching in the Force, and Rey can’t study it for long without tripping over her feet, so she focuses on Lando’s voice and his stories, and refuses to even acknowledge one other thing she noticed --

Poe Dameron walks next to Jessika Pava, their arms touching in a way Rey would assume inconvenient for a hike over difficult terrain.

***

The temple looms up suddenly in a way Rey didn’t expect; it’s nothing like the Massassi temples on Yavin 4, or the structures erected in Ri’ia’s honor on Jakku. This temple fits into the terran, a small entrance with odd runes carved around the frame the only sign that a temple exists here at all.

Their little party draws to a halt some five hundred feet away from it, and Lando clears his throat. “This is, uh, as far as I’ll take you.”

Rey lifts an eyebrow in question, and he offers her a weak smile. “It does...funny things to your head. Brings up things you’d rather forget, taunts you with them...my people think it’s haunted, and so do the natives of this planet. I don’t recommend anyone enter who isn’t strong with the Force -- people have gone mad even touching the entrance.”

 _Oh, great,_ Rey thinks to herself, studying the small entryway with pursed lips.

“I can go in with you,” Poe whispers, a hand at her elbow. Rey almost startles -- she’d thought he was still at the back with Jess.

“There’s no need.” She shakes her head and pulls away slightly, hoping he won’t be offended. She can feel everyone’s eyes on her as she studies the distance between them and the entryway.

“I’ve already sent you a blueprint of an aerial scan we took of the temple.” Rey pulls the scan up and studies it for a moment, frowning at the subterranean warren of tunnels that exist in it. “The indigenous tribe -- years ago when their chief priestess was still alive -- marked a separate chamber where they believe the story of the Sith weapon originates. Make sure your comms are on,” Lando warns her. “The things that place will remind you of… it isn’t pleasant.”

“Not many of my memories are,” Rey murmurs, almost to herself, and Finn reaches out to squeeze her shoulder. She wants to argue that Finn _is_ strong with the Force, that he can accompany her in there, but he hasn’t offered, and he has Rose to come home to.

So, she offers the group a tight smile and walks forward without so much as a goodbye.

Panic immediately overwhelms her in the Force when she does, and Rey hesitates for a second if the temple is _that_ powerful of an influence. Then, she isolates the source.

Poe.

Rey turns around, her feet not stopping, and looks at him -- his face is almost entirely neutral, but there’s a tightness to his eyes that wasn’t there before. Rey offers him a fuller smile, and shakes her head.

“I’ll be right back,” she promises.

She’s never made a promise like that in her life, but the comfort it offers spreads like slow-dripping molasses through Poe’s signature, dampening the spiky bursts of anxiety that have suddenly sprung up. Odd. He didn’t express this much concern about his own possible death when they landed.

Rey turns and continues to walk; she doesn’t break stride when she hits the entrance, and the passageway slopes down, under the surface, not quite lit, but not quite total blackness either.

She walks for almost a quarter of an hour with nothing but strange, echoing whispers that seem to snag at her ankles like strands of smoke. Rey refuses to acknowledge them, and eventually they disappear -- she misses them when they do because now she’s entirely alone down here.

But, alone is what she’s good at. Alone is what she knows. This temple has another thing coming if it things _isolation_ is going to drive Rey mad. She knows it too well to be afraid of it now.

When she turns the corner towards the blinking beacon on her handheld -- four more turns, and maybe two more levels down, and she’ll be there -- the whispers come back, full force until they aren’t whispers anymore, they’re screams, of agony, of pain, of rage --

_“Come back!”_

_“Shut up, girl!”_ \--

\-- Rey slaps a hand to the wall to brace herself, grits her teeth, and continues walking, the wall smooth and cold under her palm --

_“Get to work--”_

_“I’ll destroy her too--”_

_“Ani!”_

_“No, no -- it isn’t true!”_

_“ANAKIN, NO!”_ \--

\-- The last scream makes her feet stumble, her hand slipping away from the wall that she’s been sliding along, and Rey feels the distinct tug of the Force; rather than fall into it like It wants, she sprints instead, the path clear in her mind even as terror grips her by the throat, a phantom hand in the dark.

There’s something behind her, and Rey refuses to look even as the sounds of labored breathing fills her ears. There’s something not right about the breathing, not right at all, the hissing of machinery accompanying it; Rey chances a look over her shoulder finally when it shows no sign of relenting.

A man dressed entirely black, in a helmet that inspires more fear in her gut than Kylo Ren’s ever could, pursues her. He isn’t running, but he’s managing to keep pace, looking like a shadow even in the darkness, and Rey doesn’t scream no matter how much she wants to.

A red lightsaber ignites, cutting through the low light, and Rey spins, her own lightsaber already on and in her hand. The man reaches out -- _Darth Vader,_ Rey remembers, pulling from a memory that isn’t her own, that she won in a fight for her life a year ago on Starkiller -- as though he could pull her to him, but Rey ignores it and rushes forward with a feral cry.

She cuts through the man easier than she’d cut through a leaf, and he crumples to the ground, only cloak and helmet remaining. When she kneels to pull the helmet free, there’s nothing inside.

The whispers start again, and Rey heaves the helmet away from her, sprinting once more towards her objective, barely sparing a look at the map to make sure she’s on the right track.

One turn, another, a third -- Unkar Plutt is on her right as she runs down the last corridor, and she dodges his meaty fist easier than she had as a malnourished child -- and Rey throws herself into the chamber marked on the map, her chest heaving, sweat pouring from her hairline. She grips her cramping stomach with one hand and forces herself to even out her breathing before she starts to record the chamber using her hand-held.

There’s a series of paintings on the wall:  a man’s reaching out towards a child, and the child bears his face; it’s contorted in agony though, as the child’s being lowered into a crib that more closely resembles a crypt, and an old man waits below, with arms extended, as though waiting to consume the child. Further down the wall, the child stands alone in what appears to be a room. Rey doesn’t look much further past that, and sets the holo-scanner to finish recording the chamber, as something else catches her eye, set into the wall under the old man.

She walks forward, foreboding crawling up and down her spine, but she elects to ignore it for the time being. The object in the wall had flashed when the holo-scanner passed over it, and it flashes again as the scanner runs over it a second time.

Rey reaches out to it, the Force singing around her, not in happiness or displeasure, but in something else entirely. It feels like the cave on Ahch-To. It feels like turning down the ghost of Ben Solo in a throne room. It feels like leaving Jakku behind. It feels like --

A device.

It jabs Rey in the palm when she reaches for it; it’s a pyramid of sorts, with a strange design not unlike a circuit board on all three sides; it takes little effort to pry it from the wall, and the Force’s singing increases to an exultant shout, one she balks from momentarily, but then the object is in her hand, and she realizes what it is.

A holocron.

She’d read about them in the texts, and they usually mean nothing good. The Force clearly wants her to take it, though, and the scanner finishes its work with a soft beep behind her. Rey turns and snags it, weighing the holocron in her hand as she pockets the device. While she frowns down at it, though, the prickle on the back of her neck flares up dramatically to a full-on roar of fear, the whispers rising like a tidal wave around her, and somehow, she knows.

Kylo Ren is here.

Rey races back up through the temple, dodging the ghosts of her past once again, ignoring the extended blade of Vader, ignoring Unkar, ignoring Snoke -- she pauses though, suddenly, without warning, when something on her periphery catches her attention.

Two figures wait for her down a side passage, their faces unclear in the dim light. One lifts a hand to her, and she hears it.

“Rey!”

_It can’t be -- Kylo said -- he was lying, of course he was lying -- I just need to see their faces --_

Rey turns towards them, and their faces grow ever so tantalizingly clearer.

But, like a scar that won’t fade, Kylo Ren’s presence in the Force surges, growing nearer to her friends grouped on the surface -- Rey can feel it through the fear of this place, the echoes of the Force that cloud everything and make it hard to see. She shakes herself and turns again, ignoring the ghosts of her parents as they call out to her, and runs as hard as she can for the surface.

The light grows brighter towards the end, and everything in her screams at her to go back, but Finn is waiting, and Poe, and Lando, and their friends, so Rey throws herself out of the temple, drenched in sweat, the holocron gripped so tightly in her hand that the corners of it draw blood, and she sprints towards them with no intent of stopping.

“The First Order,” she gasps, drawing near to the group, who all scramble to their feet looking properly alarmed, “They’re here.”

And the ships drop out of Hyperspace and into the soft blue of Brentaal’s sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ....what a horrible place to end a chapter, huh?
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> (I'd still love to hear people's predictions! I've loved everyone's so far!)
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> Happy May the Fourth Countdown!


	5. Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and co. flee from Brentaal with the device Rey discovered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Slides into the tag with a six-week-late update*

“Get to the ships!” Poe talks first, shoving Jess and Iolo away from him, jabbing a finger down the path. “Go, go, go!”

Snap, Karé, and Lando run right behind Jess and Iolo, and if Rey had half an ounce of room in her brain for anything but survival, she’d laugh at the way Snap clearly considers picking up Lando and running with him. But, the old smuggler can still move pretty quick, and they hurtle down the path before Rey clears the space between the temple and the trees.

“Are you okay?” Finn shouts as she draws near, and Rey does bark out a breathless laugh because _no, she isn’t,_ and, _no, it really doesn’t matter at the moment._

“Run!” Rey shouts back, her grip tight on the holocron despite the sweat pouring off of her, made worse by the damp, humid air above ground. Finn thankfully listens.

The sun has mostly set on Brentaal by now, but Iolo and Jess crack some kind of plasma-lights and lead the way through the trees, the soft lights bobbing and weaving in their hands; Rey, Finn, and Poe (who waits for Rey to reach the path before he starts to run, and she doesn’t miss the way his hand is reached out to her, subconsciously, when she passes him, the way his eyes are peeled on the ships above them, wariness and exhaustion set into every inch of his body) jumble together on the path, Finn unwilling to move away from Rey’s side, and Poe on their heels, pushing them to go faster as though he were one of the shepherding droids that work with his father’s livestock on Yavin.

“What the hell happened back there?” Finn demands as they weave through the trees.

“Shhh!” Snap hisses, looking up above them warily.

There’s not much to see through the canopy of the trees, but Karé has some sort of scanner in her hand, and she’s holding it like a blaster; after a few seconds, Snap takes one out as well and follows suit. Finn exchanges a look with Rey, at least, he tries to. She’s too spooked from what she saw in the temple to be very much good at any kind of expression besides vague terror and confusion.

She can feel the bleeding, pulsing heart of Kylo Ren. He’s not yet on the planet’s surface -- no matter how close he felt in the temple -- but she can feel him roiling, set to explode, and desperate for something. Rey only wishes she knew if it were the holocron she’s holding, or _her._ His obsession with her doesn’t seem to have faded, and after the encounters she had with ghosts underground, she doubts the Force has actually let their connection go the way she hoped It had.

“Rey?” Finn asks, much quieter this time. She wonders what her face looks like that Finn’s wasting valuable breath -- and running a huge risk -- in the middle of a flight for all their lives.

“If we survive, I’ll tell you,” she promises, and he seems to be appeased by this.

Her foot catches on a root a few silent minutes later, and her breath escapes her lungs in a quick puff; her heart leaps to her throat, and she waits to hit the ground, anticipating how she’ll need to roll to limit how much she slows the group down, to protect the holocron in her grip.

Instead, something warm wraps around her upper arm and hauls her upright -- the group doesn’t pause, but Rey does falter, as does Poe, who was the one who caught her. Rey smiles at him, ready to make a joke about jungles and Jedi, but instead, his eyes scan her quickly, and then he puts a hand on her shoulder blade and pushes.

“Go.”

They’re running again, this time to catch up, and Rey realizes just how slowly Poe’s been making himself run. Rey knows she could be leading the pack (she’s faster than anyone in the Resistance, something they found out while bored at the bottom of the Massassi temple one day), but it’s Poe’s speed that surprises her. After he caught her, they’d fallen slightly behind, but he clears the distance faster than she can. But, the second they’re with the group, he slows his pace again, his eyes studying the darkness on either side of them.

Rey keeps pace with Finn, her thoughts -- spiraled around survival as they are -- sparing a small amount of attention to _why_ Poe’s insisting on taking the rear of the group formation. It hits her, suddenly, that he wants to be able to see where everyone in his unit is at all times. He wants to see anything up ahead, and, if they’re attacked from behind, he’s trying to ensure _he’s_ the one who’ll take the hit first.

Stupid, noble pilot.

After a quarter of an hour of a dead run through the trees, they hit the small clearing where their ships are parked. Iolo and Jess draw up to a halt, blasters out before they’ve even fully stopped, and they peer out into the enclosure warily.

“There isn’t anyone here,” Rey insists, only sensing the Force signatures of their group, and Finn smiles at her slightly while shaking his head.

“Get to the Falcon,” Poe says roughly after (and only after, to Rey’s irritation) Jess and Iolo have walked slowly forward, blasters raised, and then signalled that everything was clear.  

“Alright.” Rey lifts her eyebrows at Finn, who shrugs with one shoulder as if to say _beats me._ They jog to the lowered ramp of the Falcon, Lando close behind them, and the four rush past Chewbacca, who bellows a mildly alarmed greeting. “Yes, Chewie, we saw the ships in the atmosphere.”

Chewbacca bellows again, agitated and sharp, while Poe dodges past him and towards the cockpit.

“No, Chewie, I don’t think it’s a good idea to fly past them, but we don’t have a lot of choices,” Poe answers.

 _Huh._ Rey didn’t know he could speak Wookiee. Regardless, Chewbacca sighs with his entire body and then runs after Poe to fill his role as co-pilot. The engines roar to life underneath them, and Rey collapses against the wall, panting.

“Water.” Finn stumbles to the small compartment near the mess and punches in a code. He retrieves a glass, fills it at the tap, and drains it, and then gets another to hand to Rey. A longtime resident of the desert, Rey is much more paced in how she re-hydrates, and she’s still sipping her first glass when Finn’s done with his second.

They head to the cockpit and watch from the entryway as Poe and Chewbacca initiate take-off. Black Squadron’s X-Wings lift with them, and Rey frowns at Lando, who’s collapsed in the seat behind Chewbacca.

“How do you plan on getting past--” Finn begins to ask, but he’s cut off by the sound of approaching TIEs, right as they clear the treeline.

“Kriff.” Poe’s hands tighten on the controls, and he taps his comms on. “Black Squadron -- Evasive maneuver Zig-Rez-Alto. Wheels down at sun-up.”

“Copy copy, Commander,” someone’s tinny voice is barely audible from the earpiece Poe wears, and in front of the Falcon, two X-Wings appear, barreling around until they’re flying backwards, weapons engaged with unseen threats above and below the Falcon -- Rey watches the TIEs light up the radar, and Finn sinks into the spare seat in the cockpit.

Lando looks up at Rey, still in the entryway, and smiles at her slickly. “I’ll be right back, my lady. If you’ll excuse me.” He bows after pulling himself up from his seat and disappears into the Falcon.

Rey watches him leave, feeling oddly fond for the old man, and when she looks back into the cockpit, she sees Poe tenser than ever.

“She’s no one’s lady, Calrissian, especially not yours” he mutters, and there’s a crackle of a response, just barely inaudible, over the earpiece. The back of his neck turns red, which only makes Rey more curious. Poe glances over his shoulder to see Rey watching him, right as a shrill alarm starts going off. “Kriff, they’ve locked onto us. Chewie, get ready to -- no, not that lever -- yes, I know this was your ship first -- Rey, sit the _kriff_ down unless you want to end up on the ceiling!”

She obliges, sliding into the seat Lando abandoned, and a second after she’s buckled, Poe slams the controls sideways and then twists a lever above his head at the same time Chewie releases the grav-stabilizer. The Falcon spins, heading towards the stars all the while, and from down below, there’s the undeniable clink of the guns engaging.

“What are you waiting for?” Poe shouts as they break through the last of the clouds and the sky out of the viewer becomes steadily more black, “Shoot them!”

Rey can hear the whoop of excitement from the cockpit as Lando locks onto whatever TIEs are left on their tail, and then they push out of atmo. Chewie warbles lightly as he taps the device Rose installed personally four months ago -- the one that runs checks to ensure nothing is locked onto their nav-systems -- and Poe nods.

“Now!” Poe and Chewbacca each grab a lever on the console between them and push forward in remarkably adept tandem. The stars outside the viewer blur into near-whiteness, signalling their ease into Hyperspace, and Rey lets out a shuddering breath.

“You okay?” Finn asks her, reaching out between them with his Force signature, whether or not he realizes it.

Rey jerks her head noncommittally and doesn’t notice that Poe’s looking back at them. “I’m fine,” she mumbles. “Felt -- Kylo.”

“Do you still feel him?” Poe asks, his voice still sharp despite their removal from danger.

“No.” Rey shakes her head, avoiding Poe’s gaze. “I -- he went away when we entered Hyperspace. He’s not …. Excuse me.” She remembers the few manners lessons Leia imparted to her and manages to climb out of her seat and disappear from the cockpit before she can do anything embarrassing like cry or confess how afraid she is.

Rey gets to the corridor near the sleeping quarters before she collapses, her back to the wall. Her chest heaves as she struggles to regain control of her breath; no matter what trick she uses, the one Master Luke taught her, the ones she’s learned in the texts, the ones she’s learned from watching Leia deal with her commanding officers, Rey can’t seem to regulate her heart or soothe the way anxiety crawls up and down her skin like bloodthirsty steeldrones.

The holocron is an odd weight in her palm, and after a minute of attempting to control her heartbeat, Rey holds it up for inspection. It’s just as nondescript as it was underground; the circuitry that runs through it apparent but not beautiful, designed for utility and not aesthetic. It doesn’t hum, not like it had when she ripped it from the mural, but nor does it simply sit in her palm. It feels odd, like an absence where they should be a presence.

Rey’s holding a void in her hand, a void that is real and tangible and very much full of _something,_ some sort of secret that is assuredly Dark given its origin, the thing or things that created it, but she can’t look away. She taps at a side of the small pyramid with her finger, and she can see where some of her blood has dried on the corners -- hoping no one will notice, Rey lifts a piece of her tunic and tries to wipe it away.

Wiping the holocron doesn’t do anything either. Rey had heard stories from some of the traders on Jakku, and a few of the older people (those who’d managed to survive past adolescence were already few and far between, so Rey always had a special sort of reverence for the elderly folk in the desert) had filled her head as a child with tales of the Jedi, of brave pirates turned war heroes, and of magic. Some of the magic stories had vessels that contained ancient and powerful entities that could be summoned when the vessel was held or touched a certain way. The holocron does not appear to operate on that sort of magic, disappointingly.

Rey scowls at the thing, recognizing that it’s probably going to be _another_ ancient, mystic artifact she struggles to understand, and she’s so busy studying it, she misses Lando sitting down in the mess, a dozen feet away. He sits in the alcove, his Force signature non-threatening and muted enough that it doesn’t draw her attention from her study, and his strange ability to blend in despite his garish cape allows him to hide from another set of eyes.

The approach of Poe Dameron does cause Rey to look up, attuned as she is to his signature. It ripples through the Force the second he stands from the cockpit to go look for her, and she knows he’s coming to find her. After a brief moment of indecision, Rey chooses not to pocket the holocron and instead keeps it in her hand. The indecision does not go unnoticed by Lando, his eyes shrewd despite his old age.

She has no idea what Poe wants from her, as the only bits of his attention he’s spared her since she emerged from the temple were limited to barking orders at her to make sure she got to the Falcon safely. Rey doesn’t particularly mind it when Poe is brusque, as she knows he’s softer than a runyip lamb in any situation that doesn’t involve the lives of his team and friends. She trusts that he had a reason to snap at her, and she assumes it was to guarantee the safety of the group and herself.

It is, Rey has come to discover, extremely difficult to be vexed by Poe Dameron. She’s been easily frustrated her whole life: by a pile of disappointing scrap, by her haul getting less portions than she wanted, by annoying questions asked by strangers she doesn’t particularly care about, by forced socialization among the Resistance -- Rey gets irritated by dropping her hydrospanner and by stubbing her toe and by officers asking her why she’s doing something and by her hair falling in her eyes. But, she’s rarely irritated with Poe.

When he rounds the corner and sees her, he doesn’t smile, and that puts her nerves back to full speed. Poe Dameron almost always smiles, except when they’re in danger, and sometimes even then. She figures he’ll let her know what has his Force signature so spiky and out of sorts, and returns to resting the back of her head on the cool wall behind her.

He stands next to her, a foot or two between their shoulders, and mirrors her posture. She closes her eyes and tries to breathe again, one in, two out, one in, two out, and no matter how spiky Poe’s Force signature might seem, something about it gets her anxiety to settle, until it’s a low, churning sensation in her gut, one more easily ignored if she focuses on nothing but the wall behind her.

“What happened back there?” Poe’s voice is rough still, and Rey shrugs, knowing that he’s looking at her without opening her eyes.

“I’m not entirely sure.”

“...Care to explain?”

“I…” Rey trails off, uncertain if Poe’s being _Poe,_ that is to say, kind and noble, or if he actually cares. When she opens her eyes to look at him, she realizes it’s definitely the latter. Maybe a combination of the two (he cares _because_ he’s noble), but still. “I found this.”

She hands him the holocron without a second though, and Poe, oddly enough, blanches. He weighs it in his hand for a few seconds before gingerly handing it back to Rey.

“You’re giving that to Leia, right?” He keeps looking down at it while talking to her, as though convinced it’s going to start moving or shooting lasers. Rey wonders if he’s noticed his hand has moved to his blaster. “I don’t … that thing … it’s not right.”

“I know it isn’t.” Rey glares at it before walking forward into the sleeping chambers, where her small bag is tucked away in the closet. Poe follows her in and watches as she slips the holocron into the satchel. “It was in the wall, in the middle of this huge mural.”

She sits on one of the beds that pull down from the wall and shakes her head. “I’ll show you the holo-record during the debrief, but there’s some sort of Sith prophecy involved here, and I think the holocron is the key to unlocking it. That’s what the Knights of Ren were after, I’m sure of it.”

“Kylo Ren wants whatever that thing is?” Poe gestures to the closet, his nose wrinkled. Rey shrugs listlessly.

“I … don’t think Kylo was there for the holocron.”

“Then what? What was he there for?”

Rey says nothing, but stares at the floor, meaningfully lifting her eyebrows. Poe sucks in a breath next to her and swears, low and powerful, in Yavini.

“That piece of … gods, Rey, I swear, he’ll never get close to you again.”

“I don’t know if it’s in your power to make that promise,” Rey reminds him gently, smiling all the same at the indignant ripple that pours off of the short pilot.

“I don’t care,” Poe counters hotly, and Rey’s smile widens as he grips his hands together and swears vehmently once more. “I swear on every kriffing star that I won’t let that creepy bastard touch you ever again. He -- after what he did to you. To me. I -- I don’t know if I can let him live if I see him again. And I’ll die if it means keeping him away from--”

“Don’t say that,” Rey whispers, and Poe falls silent. Her gaze redirects to the floor while she tries to figure out why her cheeks and ears are flaming, why she suddenly feels so sick. “Not about -- don’t promise something like that. I -- I don’t want to hear it.”

“Okay.”

They fall silent, the only sound in the compartment the whir of Hyperspace around them, and Rey swears Poe leans in a little closer to her as time drifts by.

“Are you okay?” He asks her suddenly, the same question Finn had asked her, and she gives him the same jerk of the head.

“I -- I’ll be fine.”

“I didn’t ask about whether or not you’ll be okay in the future. I have no doubts you’ll be okay in the long run. I’m asking about right now. In this moment: are you okay?”

Rey wants to lie, but something doesn’t let her. “I saw … I saw _things_ when I was down there.”

“What kind of things?”

“Things I’d rather forget.” She tightens her hands into fists, hating the way her cheeks flush again. “Lando was right -- his people are right, to avoid that place. It … it showed me…” She shakes her head, lips pressed together.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Poe assures her in a soft voice. “But I’m here for you. No matter what. No matter what you need from me, I’m here for you.”

It makes her smile, a little bit, but she doesn’t quite catch the meaning in his tone. Rey mistakes it for kindness, and doesn’t hear it for what it really is.

“I saw my parents,” she admits quietly when Poe falls silent again. He’s good at listening, for all his protests that he’s a loud, boisterous Bey, just like his mother. She doesn’t know much about Poe, but she knows he’s a good listener. “Even though Kylo said they were dead, and they abandoned me. They … they were calling to me, and … they were so close, but I could feel the First Order, and …”

“You had to leave them behind,” Poe finishes.

“No.” Rey buries her face in her hands and groans. “Well, I mean, yes. But, Poe, for a few seconds I thought I was going to leave you all up there unprotected and unwarned just so I could see them. I was going to trade seeing my parents’ faces for all of you.”

“But you didn’t.” Poe doesn’t miss a beat.

“But I _thought_ about it.” Rey slaps her hands to her lap and glares at Poe. “Don’t you understand? I’m _weak._ I’m still so weak, and so vulnerable to the Dark Side, just like Master Luke said. I - I’m not a real Jedi. I almost let you down.”

“But you didn’t,” Poe repeats, and Rey huffs. She doesn’t protest any further though, not when Poe reaches out to place a hand over hers. “You didn’t let us down. You didn’t betray us. You didn’t abandon us. You came back. Everyone faces temptation. Even the best of the Jedi do; hells, if I could count all the times I’ve thought about ejecting or pulling out of a dogfight, Leia would have had my ass demoted or court martialed dozens of times over.”

Poe squeezes her hand tightly, and Rey feels like she should lift her eyes to his now; the intensity in her gaze should frighten her, should remind her almost of a predator’s look, but it doesn’t. It’s softer for one. Warmer. Almost … no. Not loving. _But does she want it to be?_

“You’ve been let down. You’ve been betrayed. So many times, Sunshine, I don’t know how it is you can trust anyone. But you _do._ You’ve been abandoned. I wish I could personally kick the ass of every sorry son of a blaster who thought you weren’t worth the effort because you _are._ You _are,_ Rey, and you need to know, that _almost_ isn’t _did,_ and you didn’t let us down. You came back to help us, like you always do, like you did on Crait, like you did for Finn on Starkiller. You’re the person who helps everyone, and _that’s_ what Jedi do. You …” he looks sad, infinitely sad for some reason Rey can’t piece together, “You’re a true Jedi. The real deal.”

_Why does he look so sad?_

“Poe.” Rey squeezes his hand back, aware suddenly that they’ve turned to mirror each other, their knees pressed together in the tiny bunk. “I don’t know what to say. I--”

“ _Dinner time!”_ Lando shouts from the mess, and they drop each other’s hands as though they were caught doing something wrong.

Rey’s heart is pounding again, like it had during the flight through the trees, and Poe’s cheeks are oddly flushed, like he’s blushing. But, it’s strangely warm in the sleeping quarters, so Rey chalks it up to a response to the temperature.

“You comin’ to grub?” Poe asks, standing and jabbing his thumb over his shoulder, looking a little awkward.

“In a minute,” Rey whispers distractedly, her stomach churning again. She isn’t sure if she’s hungry. “You go on without me.”

“I’ll save you some bread,” Poe promises, stepping out of the quarters before she can say thank you, _thank you for the offer, thank you for getting us out of there, thank you for being so kind --_

The door hisses shut behind him, leaving Rey in the half-darkness, alone with a sudden realization: oddly enough, it’s not the holocron hidden away in the closet that’s left her with the most questions today.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys are still interested in this Episode IX speculation fic! It's still been a little difficult to step back into SW Fandom, but people have generally been very kind in the last week, so thank you to those of you who haven't given up on me quite yet!
> 
> Coming up next: "Debrief on Yavin IV"
> 
>  
> 
> p.s. My outline hasn't wavered since April, and nor will it waver in response to any spoilers or outside speculation or any future trailers/info about the movie. This is my pure, unbridled hypothesis after seeing that first Episode IX trailer. Oops! Welcome to the ~AU~, most likely.


End file.
